http://www.zerohedge.com/article/us...-silver-january-50-more-previous-highest-mont Final figures are in........
in 5months they will sell out of all american silver production. ASE's will be "out of print" by June (or continue to dig into reserves). Hectic.
Interesting to see what unfolds mid year. By law the ASE's must be from US mined silver. The US mines only about 40 million ounces a year. At this rate by June/July 100% of all silver mined will be used just for this 1 product. The Congress will need to pass new law to allow the ASE to be struck from foreign mined silver or the 2011 ASE production stopped. Questions are 1. Can the US Mint secure supply of 100% of the US mined silver to get them to July ? 2. Or does the US Mint have a stockpile of US mined silver they can tap into to allow them to go above 40 million ounces in a year? 3. Or will the Mint "recycle" older coins/bars etc from US mined silver to strike 2011 ASE's? If sales do reach 40 million, there will be many questions asked about where the US Mint is getting its silver to continue ASE production in 2011 (assuming they keep striking these coins). When you think about it, silver coins make up only about 5% of the use of mined silver. So 100% of US mine production is going into 5% of products (and just 1 type of product too, not including other silver coins minted in the US). Quite startling the amount of silver that the US (which would be the largest consumer/hoarder of silver in the world) is importing. Importing silver, exporting fiat paper. Surely the producer nations will wake up to this soon.
Too late. We've already got them hooked on using Google on their Windows computers to look for Lady Gaga. hahahaha! But seriously, Mexico would crash hard without us, so that supply is safe. China thought they were really putting one over on us, but now they just stare at that pile of paper and wonder what went wrong...
China are not staring at paper mate, they're passing the debt to other countries and buying real assets as pointed out by Gerald Celente in Melt Up. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3gytnPdQNQ[/youtube]
Well David Morgan and Mike Maloney say ASE's have to be minted from US domestic mined silver in their latest video at 2 mins 46 secs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ib8ostQ62k
There seems to be a common misconception that all the US silver is mined in the first millisecond of the year and when that silver is minted into ASE's that's it. There'll be no more until the first millisecond of the following year. Sounds silly doesn't it, but most of the posts about production stopping are using that as their basis for arguing. In reality, production will slow to a trickle (relatively) and the premiums will balloon out because the coins will me so much harder to obtain. They may turn the machines off 3 weeks of each month, just to allow a stockpile of blanks to build up so when they turn the machines on again they can run the most efficiently. They may turn all but one off and just have a single machine pumping them out. Either way, there will still be ASEs available after July. Just not in the same numbers.
This was just covered in an earlier thread this week, and I dug the actual wording up - even the US Mint president is on record misquoting the law. I'll find the thread once I'm at a regular PC (posting from the iPhone). Silver Eagles are only required to be minted from "appropriate sources" or some other similarly vague wording - the wording for gold coins however is quite explicit about being from new US domestic sources.
Found it - http://forums.silverstackers.com/message-76809.html#p76809 Read in particular the link within that post - http://www.silvercoinstoday.com/us-...es-nearing-domestic-silver-production/102809/ It looks like the US Mint is interpreting the law that they must use US mined silver, but it's on very wobbly ground - I could see this easily being challenged and overruled should they actually halt production one year citing lack of domestic supply.
